Fedora 27 - WD external HD becomes unreachable daily

I recently upgraded the HD on my Linux box running Fedora 27. I have an external 4TB WD MyBook that is always connected via USB and edited the fstab file to automount this drive vua UUID.

Roughly every 12 hours or so the drive will become unreachable. fdisk -l output includes my machine drives and then just hangs, no output regarding the connected drive... it isn't "not there", the process just locks up without any information. Attempting to reach the drive via filesystem is similar, drive appears to be mounted but clicking on it results in a never ending process and blank window. Attempts to unmount the drive are unsuccessful, it is "busy". Only a machine reboot resolves the issue.

This did not happen with my previous install, and nothing has changed except the size of my internal SSD HD. Firmware on the external drive is up to date.

Comments

Isn't anything wrong with USB cable / connection? I had a very similar issue where my USB disk suddenly was gone during day to day activities. In my case, it was an issue with the disk case / cables, maybe it's worth taking a look on it since this is also an external HD. In my case, replacing it fixed the problem.

Thanks! I just switched out the cable and will keep an eye on it - that is one thing that changed, I rearranged my set up after updating my machine and opted for a longer usb cable for the HD to support moving it. Looking good for a bad cable being the issue.